Bane
by Chibi's Sister
Summary: Dartz visits Egypt to scope out the power of the legendary Pharaoh, and runs into the current incarnation of his past and future nemesis, the Dark Magician Girl. Oneshot.


Written for a friend who wanted to know about Dartz in Ancient Egypt. This is the product of my random musings on the subject matter.

Disclaimer: I no own, you no sue

**Bane:**

Why her? Of all people why her?

She was standing there, looking at him, with a quizzical expression on her face. She got right to it—typical her. "Who are you?" she giggled. "And why are your clothes so funny?"

He looked down at himself, his irritation rising. There was absolutely nothing wrong with his robes. They were dignified, elegant even. He glared. That insufferable girl had no right to talk, dressed as she was. Yes, Egyptian styles were designed for coolness, not modesty, but even so! He glowered down at the girl.

She eyed him curiously, beginning to trot a little circle around him. "Don't you talk?" she asked ingenuously. He frowned and didn't answer.

But she didn't wait for a reply. She kept on chattering gaily. "So, why is your hair such a funny color?" No response. "And why is it so long? I've never seen anyone with hair as long as yours." She giggled again, an utterly annoying sound. "And you're not even a _girl_!"

He seethed, filled with a burning desire to destroy her. That insolent, infuriating, annoying little…how dare she grin at him like that! What did she think he was, some sort of clown? Didn't she know who he was? Well, no he supposed she didn't. He gritted his teeth. Why did it have to be _her_?

She was still circling him, skipping now, blissfully unaware of his aggravation. "And why do you have such strange eyes?" she inquired, practically bouncing up and down. "They're kinda freaky, you know that? One eye is brown, and the other eye isn't!"

"I know what my eyes look like!" He growled in exasperation.

She continued cheerfully. "Did you dye your hair to match your eye? 'Cause they kinda look like the same color."

"No, I didn't dye my hair, you fool!" he hissed. "My hair is naturally this color; just as yours is that ordinary mousy brown!"

She didn't pay any attention to him. "I would have asked if you dyed your eye to match your hair, 'cause, y'know, that eye is so freaky-looking, but you can't dye your eye! That would hurt! And I don't think it would work anyway." She turned thoughtful. "I wonder if you could change your eye color by magic?" She pulled out a hefty tome that couldn't possible have been kept in her skimpy outfit. She began flipping carelessly through the pages, chattering all the while. "I should try that sometime. Hmmm. What color should I make my eyes? I don't want to make them different colors like yours, because that's just creepy. I saw a dog once that had different color eyes like that, only its eyes were brown and blue, not brown and a freaky green kind of color. An old man on the street told me that meant the dog had an evil spirit. Do you have an evil spirit?"

Great Deities of Domination, didn't the girl ever shut up! He looked skyward, hoping for respite.

But for once, the girl actually waited for a reply. She looked at him impatiently. "Well?" she asked. "_Do_ you have an evil spirit?"

He had to make this stop before he lost his mind. "Yes." He snarled. "I do."

Her turquoise eyes went big. She stared. For once her mouth stopped moving, and hung open, silent."

"So, why don't you run along before my nasty evil spirit does something unpleasant to you?" He told her menacingly.

Before he knew what was happening, she had grabbed his hand and was darting briskly down the little dirt path, dragging him along. "Come with me!" she told him brightly. "My master will help you! He and all his priest friends will lock your evil spirit away in a big stone block!" She continued to race towards the palace, a big smile on her face.

This was not going at all the way he had planned. He dug in is heels and he and the girl came screeching to a halt. "Whoa!" she yelled as she tumbled loose although way she said it was almost as if she was enjoying herself.

"Enough is enough, girl!" he announced, his patience worn to the limit by her antics. Now she would pay!

"Y'know, my name isn't _girl_." She told him pleasantly as she picked herself up. "It's Mana! What's your name?"

"Dartz, King of Atlantis!" He roared. "Get to know the name; it's the last you'll ever hear!" An ominous green glow began to materialize around him.

The girl cocked her head to one side. "_Atlantis?_ What's that? I've never heard of it before. Where's it at? Is it a big country? Did it get conquered by Egypt? Is that why you're here, to pay tribute? Or are you being attacked, and you need help?" Questions bubbled like boiling water from her mouth.

He pushed his hands to his head. No, this wasn't happening to him. He couldn't concentrate properly with her nonstop chattering. "Shut up!" he bellowed. And then, for some inexplicable reason, he felt compelled to answer her questions so she'd stay quiet. "Atlantis is an ancient land, an island civilization advanced beyond your imagination. But sadly, it's covered by water, thanks to a magic so powerful your little master couldn't begin to conceive of it. And yes, you might say I've come here for help, but not in the way you would expect." He delivered these last words with a cruel smile, in as menacing a way he could muster with the distraction of her river of babble.

"A really powerful magic!" she exclaimed, her eyes huge "o"s. At last, he thought in satisfaction, he had managed to make an impression on her. "Whoa, that's amazing!" He frowned; her tone didn't seem as frightened as he would have expected. "Is that what that weird, freaky glow was? Oh! Is your eye magic? Is that why it's so freaky? What about your hair? Is that magic?" Her tone was full of gleeful curiosity as she literally bounced up and down while her questions tumbled out.

He groaned. Would it never stop? His head was pounding now from her chatter; he could feel the Orichalcos magic hiss in his mind, wanting to emerge in response to his anger, but unable to be channeled by his overstrained mind. Any minute now he was going to lose it….he had visions of himself exploding in a burst of shimmering green, destroyed by the magic that boiled inside him, a pent-up eruption looking for an outlet.

"If you have a magic eye, then can you use the freaky magic?" the girl wanted to know, her stream of inquiries never ceasing. "But if you can use the magic, then how come you let your kingdom get covered by water? That doesn't seem very smart. Wait…are your people fish-people? Can you breathe underwater?" She cocked an eye at him as if she expected to see fins and gills suddenly appear. "That would be so amazing!" she declared, leaping an extra foot or two in the air.

No, no, he couldn't take this anymore. She would literally talk him to death if given the chance. And if he was dead, he wouldn't b able to gather the souls necessary to resurrect the Great Leviathan, he reasoned. The Oricalcos would never be able to purge the earth of the evil—and highly annoying—human race. That was how he justified his flight, running as fast a he could from a little human girl, no more than twelve years old. His face burned with shame, but all he could think was a desperate hope that she wouldn't follow him.

She was still keeping up a steady flow of questions when she suddenly realized he was gone. "That's odd." She said, tilting her head to the side. She pondered whether she could have accidentally turned him invisible. "Sir!" she yelled. "Sir, are you there? Can you hear me?" No response. He wasn't there—unless she had turned him inaudible at the same time. She groped frantically in the direction she had last seen him, but felt only the hot Egyptian air.

"Mana? What are you doing?" The girl turned to see her mentor, Mahad, staring at her from astride his chestnut stallion.

"Master Mahad? I thought you were at the palace. That's where I told that strange man you were. Hey, I never did take him there," she reflected suddenly. "Hmmm."

The priest shook his head bemusedly as he tried to shift through what his eager young apprentice was saying. "What man? What are you talking about, Mana? And what were you doing just now?"

"Oh, I was looking for the freaky man, 'cause I thought I might have made him invisible and inaudible. He had a green eye and a brown eye—how weird is that? I think it was because of this strange magic he kept talking about. It turned his hair green, too, so it would match his one eye. I don't know why it didn't turn both of his eyes green, because, if you ask me, it would look a whole lot better. Having your eyes different colors makes you look like a dog that has an evil spirit. Hey, that reminds me---"

Mahad held up his hand to forestall the flood of prattle. "Slow down. Are you saying you turned someone invisible?"

"No." she shook her head casually. "I think he just left. And it's too bad, because I never got to ask him the question I wanted to know!"

"And what is that?" her mentor asked wonderingly, half-amused by his student, and half-curious about the encounter he knew she'd never fully explain.

"I wanted to ask him if his evil spirit could breathe underwater, too."


End file.
